Alibaba’s Ma offers world fresh lessons on power of dreams

When few Chinese households had their own computers, Jack Ma made the decision to leave teaching to set up an online business. He was a teacher of English with no experience in IT.

Today, Alibaba Group ranks as the world’s biggest in history at $25 billion. That is the power of a dream.

“I can still remember the first scene I saw when I walked into his office,” said Mr Cui, today a lecturer in new media at the China Academy of Art. “It was a pretty empty space with only one desk set up in the middle of the room. There was only one very old PC desktop surrounded by a lot of people,” he said.

Mr Ma, it turned out, had spent much of his money on registering the business and appeared to have little money left for hardware.

Studies of the psychology of peak performance have found that most great athletes, surgeons, engineers and artists use affirmations and visualisations either consciously or subconsciously to enhance and focus their skills.

Nelson Mandela has written extensively on how visualisation helped him maintain a positive attitude while being imprisoned for 27 years. “I thought continually of the day when I would walk free. I fantasised about what I would like to do,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Visualisation works well to improve attitude. Jack Ma chose a vision that was bigger than his current reality. Yet the hard truth is, generally speaking, there is a great deal of low self-esteem and lots of self-doubt in this country.

So many of us don’t know that the moment we step out to take a hold of our careers and push on to do better and achieve more, we’re already a step ahead of most other people. We don’t know that we gain a huge advantage by developing mental toughness through working on being positive and choosing to see our glass half full all the time.

Each person has a constant inner dialogue. At the end of the day, the person who wins in any walk of life is the one who thinks they can.

The universe operates by natural laws, exact precision, and perfect order. Our vision, then, must also be precise and exact in our mind in order for whatever we need to be attracted and shown to us by the intelligent forces that govern all of creation.

Magnifying glass

When we focus our brain on what we want, we actually increase the amplitude of the cellular vibration and cause the “attraction” factor to really take shape. Just like a magnifying glass can focus the sun’s rays and create a fire, focusing on your vision and goals keeps you in the right vibration and attraction field.

Even Mr Ma struggled in his early efforts to get government support for his new venture. Yet by focusing on the positive, he enhanced his expectation going forward.

I read that Wayne Rooney said that during his recovery time from his injury in 2006 he never once thought to himself that he wouldn’t make it to the World Cup.

Mediocre grades

Many people know stories about people who were at the top of their class, yet, somehow, never achieved. In other instances, there are those who got mediocre grades, or didn’t go to the top schools, who become leaders in their chosen fields.

Mr Ma reminds us that we are ultimately responsible for our success or failure, both in business and in real life. It’s all about what we create.

What a lesson from a teacher of English.